I get a decent number of emails asking how to become a literary translator. I wish I could tell you the translation equivalent of the Konami code, but tragically nobody will tell me either.

If you don’t have the time or money to do one of these newfangled MAs in literary translation, or you find yourself geographically isolated from other translators or literary organizations that offer mentorships, workshops and masterclasses, I highly recommend just creating your own mentorship at home. The great thing about this is that you can be mentored by a hugely respected translator whenever and wherever you feel like it, without them ever knowing. And if they’re dead, there’s no graverobbing required.

Materials required:
– one (1) book in its original language, which is your source language
– one (1) book, exactly the same as the one above but in a completely different language, which is your target language
– one (1) notebook
– one (1) pen
– your brain

Notes:
The point of this exercise is to get inside the other translator’s brain. I recommend picking one translator that you admire and working your way through a few books they’ve translated, then picking another translator and doing the same. Although translators will often use similar ways of solving problems, some have radically different working philosophies, and you really want to learn as many different ways of doing things as possible. Flexibility and close reading skills are what we’re looking to gain here.

How to do it:– Read the first page of the book in its original language.

– Read the first page of the book in translation.

– What has changed? Why do you think the translator has made those choices? (Resist reflexively thinking about what you would do differently.) Note the texture of the language. Do the characters seem the same? Is there anything implicit in the source text that has been made explicit in the translation? Is information revealed at the same time or in the same way? How has dialogue, humor, rhythm, etc., been dealt with? (Basically, just notice everything.)

– Write down your observations.

– Turn the page(s). Repeat until you’ve finished both books.

(Advanced exercise: The same as above, only in reverse: compare a book originally written in your target language to a well-respected translation of it in your source language.)

– Apply what you’ve learned to your own work. Repeat entire exercise until you’ve reached a higher state of translation consciousness (or unconsciousness).

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2015/06/01/mentorship-literary-translation/feed/0IMG_20150602_131102MorganRead Her Now: Five Women to Translate in 2015http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2015/03/16/read-her-now-five-women-to-translate-in-2015/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2015/03/16/read-her-now-five-women-to-translate-in-2015/#commentsMon, 16 Mar 2015 14:47:46 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1509]]>Nearly two years have passed now since my shortlist of ten female Japanese writers who need to be translated, and I’ve been surprised and delighted by the amount of attention it’s received from editors, critics, and other translators. With great initiatives such as Read Women and the Women in Translation Month project bringing more attention to the disparity in who gets translated, it feels like the right time to add a few more names to the conversation.

Last year’s list was ten, but this year’s is five because I’m a little short on time. You see, I got to translate one of the women on the 2013 list – Naocola Yamazaki, and I’m trying my damnedest to get her published. How lucky can I be? I hope this list pushes another deserving author into a little bit of the limelight.

So in no particular order, here’s my shortlist of five living, amazing Japanese female authors who need to be translated into English.

1. Tomoka Shibasaki 柴崎友香

(1973 – )

When I originally began writing this, Shibasaki had just won the Akutagawa Prize for The Spring Garden (春の庭 – Haru no niwa). Her books tend to focus on the lives of young women in cities, with a “unique ability to capture situations with the sharpness and accuracy of a high-spec camera” (J’Lit). Born in Osaka, she was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize in 1998 while still working in an office. Her 2006 novel Today, in that City (その街の今は – Sono machi no ima wa) won the MEXT Award for New Artists (a Japanese government award), the Oda Sakunosuke Award (celebrating new authors from the Kansai region), and also earned Shibasaki her first nomination for the Akutagawa Prize. Her 2010 book Night and Day (寝ても覚めても – Nete mo samete mo) won the Noma Prize for New Writers.

Selected works:

春の庭 (Haru no niwa, “The Spring Garden”). Bungeishunju Ltd., 2014. ISBN 978-4-16-390101-5. Tarō, recently divorced, has just moved to an apartment building in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, which is slated for demolition. When he spies a woman who lives in the same building trying to enter the premises of the house next door, the woman gives him a most surprising reason…

その街の今は (Sono machi no ima wa, “Today, in that City”). Shinchobunko, 2009 (paperback – hardback published in 2009). ISBN 978-4-10-137641-7. When Kasumi’s company goes bankrupt, she starts working part-time at a cafe. On the way home from an awful first experience at a group blind date, she comes across Ryōtarō. They start meeting up, looking at old photos of Osaka. A tale of the changing face of Osaka, days gone by, and the daily lives of young people there today, told with warmth and vision.

ドリーマーズ (Doriimaazu, “Dreamers”). Kodansha, 2012. ISBN 978-4-06-277341-6. A collection of linked short stories. On a visit to their hometown for the first anniversary of their father’s death, “I” stays with their sister and falls fast asleep, dreaming that their father does not realize he’s dead… In these stories, Shibasaki depicts how lacking in preciousness the world we see is, being neither fully dream nor reality.

2. Aoko Matsuda 松田青子

(1979 – )

Born in Hyogo, before becoming an author, she participated in a theatre group and studied to be an English translator. Her writings on her blog were noticed by author Shin Fukunaga, and in 2008 her short story “Shampoo and Rinse” was published as a guest contribution in a zine called Irkutsk 2, run by authors including Tomoka Shibasaki and Yū Nagashima. In 2010, she debuted for real with Nothing But Waterproof Lies!, a play, which was published in Waseda Bungaku magazine, Japan’s oldest literary magazine. Her first book, Stackable/s (スタッキング可能 – Sutakkingu kanō), came out in 2013, gaining her nominations for both the Mishima Yukio Prize and the Noma Prize for New Writers. Her second collection of novellas and short stories, Eiko’s Forest (英子の森 – Eiko no mori), was published earlier this year. She has translated Karen Russell into Japanese and participated as an author at the British Centre for Literary Translation’s summer school. Waseda Bungaku describes her writing by saying, “Her keen mixture of rhythmical spoken language and bookish sensibility suggests fresh possibilities for Japanese literature,” and I couldn’t agree more. Her works are, for the most part, possibly untranslatable, but aren’t those the best?

“Smartening Up”, translated by Polly Barton. Appeared on Granta’s New Writing blog. Available free online.

Selected works:

スタッキング可能 (Sutakkingu kanō, “Stackable/s”). Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing Co., 2013. ISBN 978-4-309-02150-8. Life in an office, floor after floor of people, where everyone plays a certain role. There’s the young woman battling sexist attitudes, the dreamer who thinks he’s like a comic book hero, the team leader who… well, better read the excerpt. Formally innovative and told from as many perspectives as there are cubicles in HR, it’s at once hilarious, moving and awe-inspiring.

英子の森 (Eiko no mori, “Eiko’s Forest”). Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing Co., 2014. ISBN 978-4-309-02256-7. Eiko, a recent graduate, struggles to find meaningful work using her painstakingly-learned English. Everyone told her English was the magic key to a new world, but the key’s looking a bit tarnished and the door’s nowhere to be seen. Her mother has retreated from the reality of her stunted life into a magical world of her own… Can Eiko find the way out? (And other stories.)

3. Sayaka Murata 村田沙耶香

Sayaka Murata (1979–) began writing in elementary school, but she officially debuted in 2003 with Junyu (Breast-Feeding), which received a Gunzo Prize for New Writers merit award. She won the 2009 Noma Prize for New Writers for Gin iro no uta (Silver Song), and in 2013, she was awarded the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of a White City). Her writing has the “ability to penetrate disturbingly far into the recesses of contemporary female psychology” (J’Lit), especially focusing on the intensity and bewilderment of puberty and early sexual experimentation.

Selected work:

しろいろの街の、その骨の体温の (Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no, “Of Bones, of Body Heat, of a White City”). Asahi Shinbun, 2012. ISBN 978-4022510112. Yuka, a ten year old girl, lives in a “new town”, growing as rapidly as she is. As the countryside is devoured by white concrete, Yuka develops a tentative relationship with a boy called Yuta. Four years later, development has stalled, for both Yuka and the town. Her adolescent sense of awkwardness with her new body leads Yuka to act out sexually, and rumors spread about her, transforming her into a monster in the eyes of her classmates…

4. Mariko Asabuki 朝吹真理子

Mariko Asabuki (1984–) has had an extraordinary start. Her first work, Ryuseki (Traces of Flow), won the 2010 Bunkamura Deux Magots Literary Prize. Her second work, Kikotowa, won the Akutagawa Prize. Her rich vocabulary and thematic focus on time and memory, as well as her childhood surrounded by two generations of French scholars, have led to some comparisons to Proust.

Selected work:

きことわ (Kikotowa). Shinchosha, 2011. ISBN 978-4103284628. Two women, Kiko and Towako, who used to play together during summer holidays until 1984, are reunited when Kiko’s family villa is about to be demolished. Now in their forties, sorting through the things left behind in the villa, the story increasingly attempts to sort out whose memories belong to whom. An ambitious and elegant story of friendship, time and memory.

5. Tahi Saihate 最果タヒ

Tahi Saihate (1986–) would be a rare find in any country. Young, intensely devoted to her craft, and taking full advantage of the Internet as a medium for her poetry, her 2014 collection Shinde shimau kei no bokura ni (For Us, the Dying Kind) gained mainstream attention and became a popular success. Shinde shimau, largely dealing with the death of a loved one, is immediate, reflective, and unashamedly personal in a way that becomes universal. Most of her poems appear first on Twitter (where she posts gifs of her composing the poem) or on Tumblr. She has won the Gendai Shi Techo Award (2006) and the Nakahara Chuya Award (2008). Saihate also writes prose, bringing a real poet’s playfulness to language, structure, and world-building. My favorite author, Gen’ichiro Takahashi, said of her: “Most poets stare into space or the future or themselves or their bookshelves and write poems. That’s fine. But Tahi Saihate stares at us and at the world we all live in and writes poems. And then she kindly sends them out to all of us.”

Since she hasn’t been translated yet, I’ll give you my favorite line of hers, the very beginning of a poem called “Perfume Poem”:

I wish music or anything that speaks for girls’ feelings, all of it, would die.

星か獣になる季節 (Hoshi ka kemono ni naru kisetsu, “The Season of Becoming a Star or a Beast”). Chikuma Shobo, 2015. ISBN 978-4480804570. The story of a friendship that begins when the pop-star they’re both fans of is arrested on suspicion of murder.

かわいいだけじゃない私たちの、かわいいだけの平凡。(Kawaii dake ja nai watashi-tachi no, kawaii dake no heibon, “We’re Not Just Cute, Just Our Cuteness is Common”). Kodansha, 2015. ISBN 978-4062192842. The story of a girl with magical powers who is transformed by the power of the Internet.

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2015/03/16/read-her-now-five-women-to-translate-in-2015/feed/6MorganTomoka ShibasakiAoko Matsudamurata3asabukitahi151st Akutagawa & Naoki Prize Nomineeshttp://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/07/14/151st-akutagawa-naoki-prize-nominees/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/07/14/151st-akutagawa-naoki-prize-nominees/#commentsMon, 14 Jul 2014 14:44:17 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1507]]>The nominees for the 151st Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes have been announced. The prizes will be awarded on July 17th.

The Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes are usually awarded in January and July each year. The Akutagawa Prize is generally considered the biggest Japanese prize for literary fiction, while the Naoki Prize is the most prestigious for popular fiction, however you care to define either of those fairly arbitrary categories. The Akutagawa focuses on mid-length fiction by writers who are not yet well-known. Both were established in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan to honor the memories of Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Naoki Sanjugo. Anglophone readers of Japanese fiction are likely to recognize Akutagawa as the author of “Rashomon” and “The Nose”, and long-time readers of this blog may recognize Naoki.

So without further ado, here are your Akutagawa Prize nominees for July 2014:

A novel with a new feel “written with the assumption that the reader is a Chinese person learning Japanese.” Our protagonist, Japanese and raised in China, returns alone to Japan for visa reasons. And then something unexpected occurs…!?

The only prediction I’m willing to make: you’ll never see it translated.

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/07/14/151st-akutagawa-naoki-prize-nominees/feed/0open-book-on-top-of-pile-of-booksMorganPostcard Poemshttp://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/16/postcard-poems/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/16/postcard-poems/#commentsMon, 16 Jun 2014 16:18:35 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1500]]>For £2.50, I’ll send you (or your crush, or your enemy, etc) a nice postcard with a Japanese poem in the original and in English translation.

I have good handwriting, as well as good taste in poetry.

In the “special instructions to the seller” field, tell me what kind of poem you want: seasonal, love, heartbreak…

Buy now! Or regret your missed opportunity when I am too successful to be doing this anymore.

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/16/postcard-poems/feed/0open-book-on-top-of-pile-of-booksMorganBuy Now ButtonDiary: Cool, sometimes mean.http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/14/diary-cool-sometimes-mean/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/14/diary-cool-sometimes-mean/#commentsSat, 14 Jun 2014 17:46:06 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1496]]>I am translating This World Isn’t Made Two by Two by Nao-cola Yamazaki. This is my weekly translation diary.

Often being a translator means reading really closely, paying attention to the structure and mechanics of a story, how the author creates effects on a phrasal/sentence/paragraph/etc level. I’ve described the job before as being like a really complex crossword (not quite cryptic, thank God). You find yourself saying to whatever poor schmuck is near you, “Okay, I need a short word that means ‘virginity’ but isn’t too prim, and maybe includes the concept of faithfulness” – an actual problem from earlier today (see below and any answers on a postcard, please).

But I’ve also talked a lot on here about how the translator brings their personal experiences to a text. This can be great, sometimes making the difference between a competent text and one that really feels true to the audience. In a lot of ways, this book takes place in my world. I know these people.

Knowing these people isn’t always nice, though. And reading closely can get too close for comfort.

Today I translated an important passage in the novel, one which made me so angry when I first read it that I had to close the book and sit quietly for a minute before resuming. Sitting at my computer this morning, I reread it, largely unaffected, noticing a few translator-y things I hadn’t seen before when I was simply a reader. Then I started to write it in English, which is when the trouble began.

When you translate a couple’s fight, it must sound like a fight. What’s that sound like? Maybe your brain, like mine, instantly filled with all the crushing things a lover’s ever shouted at you, plus a few comedy options gleaned from films and television. Dismiss the movie bullshit – it’s not real enough. You wouldn’t have shut the book when you first read this part if the original text was full of clichés. So you’re left with your actual traumas.

Kamikawa-san lectures Shiori, about how irresponsible she was to go off traveling on her own, about how the world is dangerous for young women. He says bizarre things; he is angry beyond all reason but believes that he is actually reasonable. Have you been in a relationship like that before? You have. You try to forget about it in general, but this is work, and you need to write another 300 words today to hit your target.

You look up across the kitchen table. Your boyfriend is working away, too. He notices you looking, smiles, returns to work. You look back at your screen. Your cursor blinks, frozen at, “I can’t believe you think it’s fine to make your boyfriend feel that way.”

Okay. What does Shiori have to say? How does she frame the argument? Focus on that. You’re a reader, you over-identify with characters all the time, so put yourself in her shoes. She’s no weakling. She says:

He had a tone that said: I am not wrong here, I am a person who has sense. He’d have furrowed his brows over a young woman walking alone at night, even in Japan. He thought that a woman’s place is in the home.

“I don’t live to protect my virtue,” I spat out.

She dismisses his rants as “stupid,” as being “nonsense” (たわごと). Be as dispassionate as Shiori when you translate this. In the essay after the novel, Kanako Nishi says that Shiori is “set apart from others,” “very intent,” “cool, sometimes mean.” You love her for it.

Translate like you’re cool, sometimes mean.

Turn the page.

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/14/diary-cool-sometimes-mean/feed/0tamagawaMorgankonoyoDiary: “Goodbye, our Pastels badges!”http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/06/diary-flippers-guitar-naocola-yamazaki/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/06/diary-flippers-guitar-naocola-yamazaki/#commentsFri, 06 Jun 2014 15:37:00 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1489]]>I am translating This World Isn’t Made Two by Two by Nao-cola Yamazaki. This is my weekly translation diary.

Today I woke up feeling like I might be the perfect translator for this book. I mean, I loved it since I first read it last year, so much that I wrote a little about it here, and when I met with Yamazaki’s agent I certainly tried to give the impression that I would be the perfect translator for this book, but I didn’t quite believe it myself then. So have I just repeated it often enough that I’ve bought into my own hype?

(One of the best pieces of professional advice I’ve ever received is to buy into your own hype. Most days it works. I am a fan of elaborate forms of self-deception as substitutes for actual confidence – self-deception is far easier to come by.)

The protagonist, Shiori, and her friend Kamikawa-san were “both born in 1978 and were children in the ‘80s, when both the economy and culture were on the rise.” I suppose I can’t really relate to that, or only in a fun-house mirror way. I was born in 1987, on the other side of the world, and throughout my early childhood, Japan was a boogeyman, the economic force threatening America. Around the same time, Toyota was building a factory not far from where I was born, their first stand-alone plant in the US. In the same way that children around the world hear that learning English is the key to their futures, I was absorbing the idea that learning Japanese was the key to mine.

But the bubble burst and Japan wasn’t the future anymore. Except it was still my future. Throughout the ’90s, Japan was still the coolest. Shiori says, on the first page of the novel, “People say nothing much happened in the ‘90s. I don’t know if that’s true or not…” But she knows it’s not, and even if you weren’t aware of Shibuya-kei at the time, you can’t read this novel and fail to see just how exciting youth culture was then. Shiori and I share a deep love of Flipper’s Guitar, the Anglophile pop band that eventually spawned Cornelius. She says that she spent high school daydreaming about Kenji Ozawa, at one point she sits down and cries to Doctor Head’s World Tower (1991), and the climactic scene of the novel takes place to “Slide”, a song from their compilation album Colour Me Pop (also 1991).

Today’s realization was prompted by reaching a point in the novel where the protagonist and I are living eerily similar lives. In England it sounds almost like a tabloid accusation, but when Kamikawa-san tells Shiori, “This is the kind of country where even a slacker can live,” I see my own life reflected. She works part time so she can be a writer and goes out dancing in Shibuya with Kamikawa-san when she can; I work part time so I can be a translator and I go out dancing, to much the same music, with my boyfriend when I can. Tonight we’re going to the final How Does It Feel to be Loved? club night in Brixton, a night which has been either at the center or the periphery but always a part of my life since I moved to London, and I can’t help thinking how much fun Shiori would have if she came along tonight.

It’s nice when the people you work with are like friends. In my case, the people I’m working with are fictional, but Nao-cola Yamazaki’s written about them in such a loving way that it’s easy to forget.

So maybe I have bought into my own hype, but I don’t think so. And if anyone reading this has more indiepop coming-of-age novels they need translated, you know where to find me.

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/06/06/diary-flippers-guitar-naocola-yamazaki/feed/0Flippers-GuitarMorgankonoyo150th Akutagawa Prize nomineeshttp://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/01/02/150th-akutagawa-prize-nominees/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/01/02/150th-akutagawa-prize-nominees/#commentsThu, 02 Jan 2014 16:20:21 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1467]]>The nominees for the 150th Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes have been announced. The prizes will be awarded on January 16th.

The Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes are usually awarded in January and July each year. The Akutagawa Prize is generally considered the biggest Japanese prize for literary fiction, while the Naoki Prize is the most prestigious for popular fiction, however you care to define either of those fairly arbitrary categories. The Akutagawa focuses on mid-length fiction by writers who are not yet well-known. Both were established in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan to honor the memories of Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Naoki Sanjugo. Anglophone readers of Japanese fiction are likely to recognize Akutagawa as the author of “Rashomon” and “The Nose”, and long-time readers of this blog may recognize Naoki.

So without further ado, here are your Akutagawa Prize nominees for January 2014:

ITO Seiko (いとうせいこう), for “A Pincer Attack on the Nose” (「鼻に挟み撃ち」), first published in the December 2013 issue of Subaru. This is Ito’s second nomination for the Akutagawa; he was nominated in July 2013 for “Imagination Radio” (「想像ラジオ」), a sample of which has been translated here by Louise Heal Kawai. “Imagination Radio” was his first novel in 16 years and is part of the developing body of post-disaster literature, asking, as the Japan Foundation summarizes, “Are the living permitted to speak for the departed? What is the right way to mourn the dead?” It’s the kind of Japanese novel I expect we’ll see more of in English soon.

IWAKI Kei (岩城けい), sometimes known as KS Iwaki, for “Goodbye, Orange” (「さようなら、オレンジ」), winner of the Osamu Dazai Prize for 2013. “Goodbye, Orange” is her debut, a touching and surprising novel with real international appeal. Iwaki is a long-term resident of Australia and a translator, so I’m kind of cheering for her. And her publishing company, Chikuma Shobo, pledged on their Twitter: “In the event that Iwaki Kei wins the Akutagawa Prize, we’ll upload a video of all staff (some women, but in the main, middle-aged men) dancing to AKB48’s ‘Koi suru Fortune Cookie’! But is there interest?” Have some confidence, guys. If these schmucks can get over 500,000 views, anyone can.

OYAMADA Hiroko (小山田浩子), for “Hole” (「穴」), first published in the September 2013 issue of Shincho. Born 1983 in Hiroshima Prefecture, Oyamada previously won the Shincho Award for New Writers in 2010 with “Factory” (「工場」), which was also nominated for the Mishima Prize in 2013. After graduating university, she went into the publishing industry where she met her now-husband, who apparently encouraged her to pursue writing. For those who are able to read Japanese, the first pages of “Hole” are available online here. For those of you who aren’t, the first paragraph reads:

I moved to this town with my husband. At the end of May he received notice that he was being transferred, that the location he was being transferred to was a rural office in the same prefecture but rather close to the border. The town the office was located in was where my husband’s family lived, so he called his mother to ask whether she knew of any affordable property. “What about next door?” “Next door?” “There’s no tenant. They cleared out just the other day.” My mother-in-law’s voice carried; I could hear every word sitting next to my husband. There was a rented house next door to his parents’? This was the first I’d heard.

MATSUNAMI Taro (松波太郎), for “LIFE”, first published in the July 2013 issue of Gunzo. Born 1982 in Mie Prefecture, he dropped out of both Daito Bunka University and Beijing Foreign Studies University before graduating from Utsunomiya University and gaining a Master’s from Hitotsubashi University’s Language and Society Research department. In 2008, he won the Bungakukai Prize for New Authors for “Decommissioned Vehicle” (｢廃車｣). This is his second time up for the Akutagawa; he was nominated in 2009 for “Wormwood Academy High School Soccer Club” (「よもぎ学園高等学校蹴球部」). Of “LIFE,” the Yomiuri says briefly: “A 31-year-old part-timer who gives himself over to fulfillment without basis is turned into a machine for birthing children with chromosomal abnormalities. This acute theme is handled gently.” No, I don’t really understand either.

YAMASHITA Sumito (山下澄人), for “Korvatunturi” (「コルバトントリ」), first published in the October 2013 issue of Bungakukai. Yamashita has found success both as a playwright and an author, winning the Noma Prize for New Authors in 2012 for “The Green Monkey” (「緑のさる」). This is his second nomination for the Akutagawa, having been nominated in 2012 for “Gitchon” (「ギッちょん」). Describing “Korvatunturi,” the Yomiuri says: “Stream-of-consciousness depiction of the narrator’s recollections of growing up in a working class town.”

I’ll introduce the Naoki nominees next Thursday.

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2014/01/02/150th-akutagawa-prize-nominees/feed/0translation-language-611-1MorganIto SeikoIwaki KeiOyamada HirokoMatsunami TaroYamashita Sumito2013 shortlist: 10 Japanese female authorshttp://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2013/06/13/japanese-female-author-shortlist/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2013/06/13/japanese-female-author-shortlist/#commentsThu, 13 Jun 2013 07:57:51 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1397]]>Since the new year, I’ve been trying to read more books by Japanese women, with a view to eventually making other people read them as well.

So in no particular order, here’s my shortlist of ten Japanese female authors who need to be translated into English. Eight are living, two are dead; five have books which have been selected by the Nippon Foundation as recommended for translation; two are Zainichi, one is Chinese. All are excellent. This is based on my own, highly biased opinions, so if you think I’ve overlooked someone unfairly, please tell me about her in the comments.

1. Wataya Risa 綿矢りさ

(1984 – )

Since becoming the youngest-ever winner of the Bungei Prize in 2001 for Install (excerpt here) and the Akutagawa Prize in 2003 for Keritai senaka (‘The Back I Want to Kick‘ – excerpt here), Wataya has developed remarkably as a writer during a decade spent, mainly, working in a department store in Kyoto. Her novel Kawaisōda ne? (‘Oh, Poor Thing’) won the Kenzaburo Oe Prize in 2012, making it a likely candidate for translation. Describing the plot of one of her books makes her writing sound trivial, but it is her gorgeously textured writing and her observations of the workings of the human mind that make her a must-read.

蹴りたい背中 (Keritai senaka, “The Back I Want to Kick”). Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing Co., 2003. ISBN 4-309-01570-0. An isolated high school girl develops a strange attraction to a fellow outcast who is obsessed with a model she once met. Love and hate are so closely intertwined.

2. Yamazaki Nao-cola 山崎ナオコーラ

(1978 – )

Winner of the Bungei Prize in 2004 for her debut Hito no sekkusu wo warau na(‘Don’t Laugh at Someone’s Sex Life’ – has been adapted into a film), Yamazaki is popular among young women for her honest depictions of their lives, friendships and relationships. She has been repeatedly shortlisted for the Akutagawa Prize, but no win yet. I loved Kono yo wa futarigumi de wa dekiagaranai(‘This World Isn’t Made Two-by-Two’, roughly); it’s about the personal and professional struggles and triumphs of two friends floundering for a future in the post-Bubble world. Her short story collection Ronri to kansei wa sōhan shinai (‘Logic and Emotion are not Contradictory’) is also excellent. Yamazaki never prettifies or tries to make her characters more than they are. Attention, Lena Dunham: get one of her books into the background on ‘Girls’ now. (Just kidding! …maybe?)

論理と感性は相反しない (Ronri to kansei wa sōhan shinai, “Logic and Emotion are not Contradictory”). Kodansha, 2008. ISBN 978-4062769136. Short story collection focusing on the everyday fraught nature of relationships.

この世は二人組ではできあがらない (Kono yo wa futarigumi de wa dekiagaranai, “This World Isn’t Made Two-by-Two”). Shinchosha, 2010. ISBN 978-4101383729. What room is there for love, music, and writing in the post-Bubble economy? What kind of relationships can we have with each other? What does it mean to be part of society?

(Already translated into: French.)

3. Aoyama Nanae 青山七恵

(1983 – )

The 2005 winner of the Bungei Prize, Aoyama won the Akutagawa Prize in 2006 for Hitori biyori (‘On My Own‘). I’ll admit this is all I’ve read by her but it’s an utterly charming depiction of a friendship between two women, aged 20 and 71, living in a disconnected world. In 2009, she became the youngest-ever winner of the Kawabata Prize for her short story ‘Kakera’ (‘Fragments’) and published her first novel Watashi no kareshi (‘My Boyfriend’) in 2011. Her descriptions and dialogue are finely crafted – crisp, wry and complex without seeming to try.

4. Miura Shion 三浦しをん

(1976 – )

A massively popular writer (three film and one TV adaptation), Miura won the Naoki Prize in 2006 for Mahoro ekimae tada benriken (‘The Handymen of Mahoro‘), a linked short story collection set on the outskirts of Tokyo, followed up with two more collections set there. For me, her 2011 novel Fune woamu (‘Assemble the Boats’) is tremendous, a hugely charming tale of a lexicographer in love. It won the Booksellers Award in 2012, no small feat considering the competition included some of the biggest-selling entertainment authors in Japan. She lavishes attention on details, drawing the reader effortlessly into slightly strange mileaus. I predict she’ll make it into English sooner than most on this list.

船を編む (Fune wo amu, “Assemble the Boats”). Kobunsha, 2011. ISBN 978-4-334-92776-9. A lexicographer working on a new dictionary falls in love with an unexpected woman and doesn’t quite have the words to deal with it. Has been adapted into a film.

(Already translated into: Chinese, German, Korean.)

5. Kawakami Mieko 川上未映子

(1976 – )

Not just an author but also a singer and actress, Kawakami won the 2008 Akutagawa Prize for Chichi to ran (‘Breasts and Eggs‘ – excerpt here), an odd tale of three women in a family, how they relate to each other and to their own bodies – really, please do read the excerpt. In 2010, Kawakami won the MEXT Award for New Artists and the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Prize for Hebun(Heaven), a novel focusing on the relationship between two students who are brutally bullied at school. Her most recent novel, Subete mayonaka no koibito-tachi (‘All the Lovers in the Dead of Night’) is about a socially awkward proofreader in her mid-thirties and the few relationships she manages to develop, poking again at what it means to be a woman. Her characters and situations are all too real. There are few authors writing in any language that write as honestly about women’s subjective experiences. Please, let’s get her published.

Selected works:

乳と乱 (Chichi to ran, “Breasts and Eggs”). Bungeishunju Ltd., 2008. ISBN 978-4-16-327010-4. Makiko and her daughter, Midoriko, come from Osaka to stay with her sister in Tokyo. Makiko, a club hostess, wants breast implants; her relationships with her daughter and sister are troubled, not to mention the one with Midoriko’s father.

すべて真夜中の恋人たち (Subete mayonaka no koibito-tachi, “All the Lovers in the Dead of Night”). Kodansha, 2012. ISBN 978-4-06-217286-8. A socially awkward proofreader in her mid-thirties develops a relationship with a man twenty years older than her, but it would be hard to call this a romance.

愛の夢とか (Ai no yume to ka, “Dreams of Love, Etc.”). Kodansha, 2013. ISBN 978-4-06-217799-3. Short story collection. The title story has been translated in Monkey Business Issue 3.

(Already translated into: Chinese, French, German, Korean.)

6. Yang Yi 楊逸

(1964 – )

Winner of the 2008 Akutagawa Prize for Toki ga nijimu asa (‘A Morning When Time Bleeds‘), Yang Yi is the first winner of the prestigious award who is a non-native speaker of Japanese. Born in Harbin, China, Yang moved to Japan in 1987, working at a newspaper for Chinese expats and teaching Chinese. She made her debut as a writer in 2007 with Wan-chan, a story about a Chinese woman who comes to Japan through an arranged marriage with a Japanese man, for which she won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers and received an Akutagawa Prize nomination. Her writing often uses Chinese poetry and incorporates Chinese idioms, making her writing fresh and unusual.

Selected works:

時が滲む朝 (Toki ga nijimu asa, “A Morning When Time Bleeds”). Bungeishunju Ltd., 2008. ISBN 978-4163273600. Love and friendships formed in the 1989 Chinese student movement followed by regrets and reminisces in Tokyo as middle age approaches.

(Has not yet been translated as far as I know.)

7. Yu Miri 柳美里

(1968 – )

The 1997 winner of the Akutagawa Prize for Kazoku shinema (‘Family Cinema’), Yu Miri has become the preeminent modern Zainichi novelist for her sweeping, autobiographical tales of her family history, particularly in Hachigatsu no hate (‘The End of August’), which focuses on her grandfather and his younger brother, and through them, the story of modern Korean history, from the Japanese occupation and ‘comfort women’ to the Korean War and beyond. Her novel Gold Rush, a disturbing psychological novel about a sociopathic youth,was published in English in 2003 by Welcome Rain. As well, Yu’s memoir series became massive bestsellers and were eventually turned into a film.

Selected works:

8月の果て (Hachigatsu no hate, “The End of August”). Shinchosha, 2004. ISBN 978-4101229317. U-Cheol and U-Geun, both well-known long-distance runners, find themselves tossed about and eventually divided by history. Trying to connect to her grandfather, Yu begins running marathons and delving into long-forgotten family history.

8. Lee Yang-ji 李良枝

(1955 – 1992)

Lee was the first Zainichi woman to win the Akutagawa Prize in 1989 for Yuhi, the story of a Zainichi student who leaves Japan for Seoul only to find she’s just as much of an outsider in Korea as she is in Japan. Lee’s writing employs rhythm and short sentences, frequently using transliterated Korean words, to “clarify the similarities rather than the differences between the Korean and Japanese languages” (Schierbeck). An excerpt from Yuhi was published in New Japanese Voices: The Best Contemporary Fiction from Japan, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991, translated by Constance Prener.

Selected works:

由煕 (Yuhi). Kodansha, 1989. ISBN 9784062043038. A Zainichi student leaves Japan for Seoul only to find she’s just as much of an outsider in Korea as she is in Japan.

(Already translated into: German, Korean.)

9. Kurahashi Yumiko 倉橋由美子

(1935 – 2005)

Influenced heavily by the French literature she read at college, Kurahashi made her debut in 1960 with Parutai (‘The Party’), a timely, surreal satire of the Japanese leftist student movement. After controversy over her 1961 novel Kurai tabi(‘Grim Journey’), she largely disappeared from the literary world until 1969’s Sumiyakisuto Q no bouken (‘The Adventures of Sumiyakista Q‘), another fantastic, abstract satire on left-wing politics. Her 1984 short story collection Otona no tame no zankoku dōwa(‘Cruel Fairy Tales for Adults’), her most popular work, is a riotous set of twisted tales. And the novel Amanon koku okan ki(‘A Record of Travel to the Land of Amanon‘), a dystopian tale of a female-dominated society, won the Izumi Kyoka Prize in 1989.

Selected works:

大人のための残酷童話 (Otona no tame no zankoku dōwa, “Cruel Fairy Tales for Adults”). Shinchosha, 1984. ISBN 978-4-10-111316-6. Retellings of Western and Japanese fairy tales, showing the reliance on retributive justice, eroticism, and overly didactic morality in these tales through dark humor.

(Already translated into: German, English [one novel].)

10. Shono Yoriko 笙野頼子

(1956 – )

Paranoiac, ‘avant-pop’ feminist postmodernism reigns in the writing of Shōno, the 1991 winner of the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers for Nani mo Shitenai (‘Not Doing Anything’) and the 1994 winner of both the Yukio Mishima Prize for Nihyakkaiki (‘The 200th Death Anniversary’) and the Akutagawa Prize for Taimu surippukonbinaato (‘The Time Slip Industrial Complex’). She is, in fact, the only author to have won all three prestigious prizes for new authors. Perhaps her best-known work is Konpira, winner of the Ito Sei Prize, a story in which a writer battles gender discrimination and bad reviews, eventually realizing she is a Hindu/Buddhist god. Her contemporary Takahashi Gen’ichiro praised the story, saying: “To be Konpira is to believe. It is to offer ultrapersonal prayers. Prayer is not an illusion. It needs no interpretation or metaphor.” Which could easily apply to all of Shōno’s work. Her writing is vitally creative and unique, global and yet ultra-personal. Much like Konpira, the world needs her more than she needs the world.

ふるえるふるさと (Furueru furusato, “My Trembling Hometown”). Shinchosha, 1994. Contains the Mishima Prize winning Nihyakkaiki (‘The 200th Death Anniversary’), a ‘slapstick fantasy’ tale of a woman visiting her estranged family for a ‘traditional’ event in which ancestors come back from the dead and time blurs.

(Has not yet been translated as far as I know.)

]]>http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2013/06/13/japanese-female-author-shortlist/feed/3MorganwatayayamazakiaoyamamiurakawakamiyangyiyumirileeyangjikurahashishonoYou Ain’t From Around Here: Translation, Globish, My Heart and the Real Worldhttp://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2013/04/29/you-aint-from-around-here-translation-globish-my-heart-and-the-real-world/
http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/2013/04/29/you-aint-from-around-here-translation-globish-my-heart-and-the-real-world/#commentsMon, 29 Apr 2013 19:01:26 +0000http://all-wrongs-reversed.net/?p=1381]]>Michael Emmerich has been endlessly criticized by reviewers and readers alike for “Americanizing” in his translations, something he pays very close attention to. I know, because this is how he introduced himself at a recent translation masterclass I attended: he read out snippets of reviews, both from Amazon and national newspapers like the Guardian, from people who cannot read the original but dislike having it rewritten in American vernacular. They suspect Emmerich is cheating them of something, or rubbing their noses in their monolingualism, or guilty of the translator’s original sin, being a translator. And these reviews come not only from British, Canadian and Australian readers, but also from American readers who prefer their translators not to put so much of themselves into their work.

I’ve also had a taste of this sort of criticism. Some readers of my first translation, The Back I Want to Kick (Keritai senaka) by WATAYA Risa, have told me they feel the tone is too “youthful” and “Americanized.” The author herself was seventeen when she won the Akutagawa for that work, and here I must admit that I was also that age when I undertook the translation. It’s youthful because the author and I were youthful, but it’s American because I am American.

This is the classic conflict between domestication and foreignization, between bringing the text closer to the target language while potentially losing some features of the source text and, on the other hand, translating in a way that “signals the differences of that text” but which may alienate target-language readers. I feel professionally obliged to name-check Lawrence Venuti here, but I don’t want to get too into theory in this essay, precisely because it is a very theoretical topic that I want to make personal.

Because this is personal, in the way that all language choices are personal. Something Emmerich said at the masterclass stuck with me: “You only have choices.” And these choices are always meaningful, because words mean something to us – not just to anyone engaged in creative writing, but to all people who use language. The words we use with our families, the words we use with our lovers, to describe our dreams, or the meal we ate last night, or how bad our day at work was – they all mean something deeply personal, imbued as they are with all the experiences we’ve ever associated with those words. Every book we’ve read, every conversation we’ve had, and every time we’ve struggled to express ourselves to others helps form our personal language, our idiolect. The way we use language is inseparable from our lives.

This means language use is also political, particularly when it comes to a language with as many global varieties as English. And especially in the case of translation into English, language use is also about economics. David Bellos notes in Is That a Fish in Your Ear? that the “target audience of most English-language publishing houses, for most of the books they put out, is indeterminately large, and includes American, Australian, Indian, Canadian and South African readers – each large grouping feeling most at home in significantly different varieties of the spoken and written tongue.” The economic pressure of needing to produce a text which can be read – and sold – in as many countries as possible leads to eschewing the usage of regional differences in translations. Bellos describes how this makes many translations, in their attempt to be natural to as many speakers as possible, subtly unnatural in a way that the original works and works originally written in English aren’t:

The language of translations-in-English is therefore not a representation of a language spoken or written anywhere at all. Because its principal feature is to be without regional features it’s hard to see from outside – and that’s precisely the point of this sophisticated stylistic trick. ‘Tranglish’ is […] smooth and invisible, and it has some important advantages. Detached with skill and craft by professional language doctors from any regional variety of the tongue, it is easier to translate than anything actually written in ‘English’ by a novelist from, say, Queensland, Ireland, Wessex or Wales. But as it is already translated […], any remaining strangeness in the prose, in the ears of a speaker of any of the myriad varieties of English the world over, is automatically construed as a trace of the foreign tongue, not of the translator’s identity. The ‘translator’s invisibility’, eloquently denounced by Lawrence Venuti as a symptom of the anti-intellectual, anti-foreign bias of Britain and America, is also the unintended result of the unbounded nature of the English language itself. (196-7)

It is because English is used in so many places that we are criticized for using regional features in translations; it is because we are sensitive users of language with command of multiple languages and registers that we become translators, but it is because we are translating that we cannot use some of those resources. Well, I say fuck that.

—-

It may be difficult to tell from my writing, but I am not actually a native speaker of standard American English.

My mother tongue is Appalachian English – to my ears, the sweetest and most painful sounds on earth. It is sweet, of course, because it means home, the people and the landscape that I love, the food I grew up with, the music that reflects my ancestry; it is painful because it means years of suppressing the way I speak and think, the prejudice that leads me and others to hide it, exile of a kind, and the history of poverty and neglect that are wrapped up, inseparably, with that concept of home. And because they are made up of idiolects, this is what dialects are: not simply a catalog of the grammatical features and words that set it apart from the standard variety, but also all of the experiences of the people who speak them: our shared history, politics, culture (traditional, popular, whatever), etc.

I learned standard American English in school and college, sometimes happily and sometimes painfully. Anyone who loves language can identify with the joy of learning a beautiful word or one that helps you better communicate your intentions. But I think speakers of denigrated dialects, as mine is, experience a unique pain, because this learning often comes about due to overwhelming cultural and economic pressure to conform linguistically and requires a tacit acknowledgment that we are, in some way, lacking. The linguistic choices we make can symbolize rejection of our origins, for social or economic advancement. And with all that dialect represents in our hearts, this is a rejection of ourselves.

I learned these lessons a second time when I moved to England four years ago. I never thought I’d adjust to my new linguistic environment, but as I’ve been writing this essay I’ve had to catch myself: “catalogue,” “symbolise,” etc. It’s been many months now since I received an email at work reminding me not to use American English in my writing, and the American-British style guide next to my desk has grown dusty from disuse. I take some grim pride in the fact that I can try on someone else’s dialect convincingly enough to “pass.” But I take no pleasure when people “compliment” me by saying, “Really, you’re American? Well, you’re very good – you can hardly tell, you know.” Because I’ve heard that before, only it was: “Really, you’re from Kentucky? Well, you can hardly tell, you know.” And every time it reminds me that once again, the words I use, even those learned painfully, are not good enough. So I find myself, in daily speech, making an active choice to eschew any “difference,” whether American or British. I have become a fluent speaker of Globish, that self-effacing, artificial language which has no country and boasts no native speakers.

And like Globish, some days I hear myself and I think, I’m from nowhere.

But I’m not. Nobody is. Not authors, not readers, and not translators.

—-

To embrace our linguistic backgrounds fully would mean creating our own radical practice of translation, rejecting invisibility in favor of difference and creating a world in which all of our words can potentially be used. In order to give people without access to the original my own very subjective reading of a text, I have to accept all the linguistic (and non-linguistic) experiences that have brought me to that reading. The very act of translation places translators in the text, indelibly. What do translators have to lose from putting even more of ourselves and our experiences into our translations?

Well, we might get more bad reviews like Emmerich has. But what do we have to gain from putting ourselves higher in the mix? We’ll be able to use the full range of our linguistic talents, our experiences, and our keen observation skills – in short, all the things that make us translators. We’ll be able to be more honest with ourselves and the world about the process of translation, how we filter a text through ourselves. This makes us vulnerable, yes, but it also can be used as a tactic to transform readers’ conceptions of translators and what we do. Because it’s not just about the text, or the author’s intention. It’s also about us, our hearts, and the real world.

William Maxwell Bickerton, September 1924.
Property of the National Library of New Zealand.

At Wednesday’s Tsuda lecture at SOAS, Professor Norma Field, in discussing the Japanese proletarian cultural movement in connection with the Fukushima catastrophe, noted that the first English translator of Kobayashi Takiji was also the first (perhaps only?) Westerner detained and tortured by the secret police. This, though only a passing mention, was like translator-crack to me.

And what is a translator, really, but a nerd with great research skills?

Mr. JOHN WILMOT asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that Mr. William Maxwell Bickerton, an English master resident in Tokio and a British subject, was arrested and imprisoned in Tokio on 13th March, was refused permission to communicate with the British Consul until 23rd March, and that, although no charge has been made against him, he still remains in gaol; if he has any information as to the reason for which Mr. Bickerton has been imprisoned; what steps are being taken to see that he is either released or brought to trial and, in the latter event, what arrangements are being made for his defence; and will he state what rights, by treaty or otherwise, as to communication with the British Consul are enjoyed by British subjects in Japan in the event of arrest by the Japanese authorities?

Sir J. Simon, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, replies:

Yes, Sir; I am aware of the circumstances relating to Mr. Bickerton’s arrest. According to the statement of the Japanese authorities, he is suspected of an offence in connection with alleged Communist activities.

Wilmot’s reply makes the unease of the situation clear:

While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his reply, may I ask him if he is aware that this gentleman, who has resided in Japan for some years, and is a highly respected English master at the University, has been informed unofficially that his offence is that of harbouring dangerous thoughts; and whether, in the circumstances, the position of British nationals in Japan is not one to which His Majesty’s Government should give serious consideration?

[William Empson] knew a 32-year-old New Zealander, William Maxwell Bickerton, who had been teaching in Tokyo since 1924. Max Bickerton had a reputation as a translator into English of Japanese proletarian novels such as The Cannery Boat, by Kobayashi Takiji. On 13 March 1934, he was taken into police custody — where he was ill-treated or allegedly beaten — and charged with promoting Communist interests. At a preliminary examination held in the Tokyo District Court on 30 April, evidence was given that on four separate occasions since September 1933 he had made financial contributions to the Japan Communist Party; he was charged under the Amendment made by Imperial Ordinance in 1928 to the Law relating to the Preservation of Peace and Order, and remanded for public trial. Mr Bickerton was ‘well aware,’ it was officially written, ‘that the Japanese Communist Party was a secret organization which aimed, as the Japan branch of the Comintern, at the transformation, by revolutionary means, of the national constitution of this country …’ But the British Consul in Tokyo managed to get him released on bail.

And from the Singleton Argus (May 23, 1934):

Tokio, Monday.–The police revealed to-day that since last year 736 persons, including 134 women, have been accused or suspected of Communist activities or sympathies, of which 53 have so far been indicted. All were Japanese, except a New Zealander, Mr Bickerton. The police charge against Mr Bickerton is that he contributed 500 yen to Japanese Communists, and assisted in the interchange of literature between British and Japanese Communists.

Prior to departing in April last year on leave of absence from two Government high schools where he taught, Mr Bickerton offered to contribute 300 yen from his travelling expense money to a Communist friend, who, however, was subsequently arrested. Mr Bickerton proceeded to Moscow, and then had several months in London, where he obtained and sent Japanese Communists 60 copies of various European Communist magazines. He also translated and gave British Communists articles published by the Japanese “Red Flag.”

Returning to Japan in September he paid 100 yen to a Communist named Matsumoto, who secretly interviewed him on the beach near Mr Bickerton’s residence. Thereafter he contributed 100 yen monthly from October to January through various intermediaries. At Matsumoto’s suggestion, Mr Bickerton in October applied for membership to the Japanese Communist Party, but while debating whether they would admit foreigners, the organisation’s leaders were arrested.

Mr Bickerton was himself arrested on March 13 and indicted on April 6. He is still out on bail of 200 yen. The date of his trial has not yet been fixed.

Police state that the Communists are in stringent financial difficulties, and that Mr Bickerton’s contributions assisted them considerably.

Who was this Matsumoto? He and Bickerton are mentioned in An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring by Chalmers A. Johnson:

The troubles of Matsumoto Shin’ichi (1901-1947), Ozaki’s friend from the time they were students together at Ichikô, also occupied Ozaki throughout much of 1939. After leaving college Matsumoto had become an ardent Communist sympathizer; he was first arrested in 1931 for having contributed to the Noulens Defense Committee fund. In 1933 he was working closely with the Japanese Communist Party’s Information Section, and he associated with the well-known Party leaders Noro Eitarô (killed by the police in 1934), Kazahaya Yosoji, and Miyamoto Kenji (both of whom later became members of the JCP’s Central Committee). Matsumoto was arrested a second time for violating the Peace Preservation Law on February 16, 1934, and his arrest led to the unusual prosecution of William Maxwell Bickerton, the first foreigner arrested under the Peace Preservation Law. Matsumoto was in jail for nearly two years, until November 16, 1935[.]

But then we have a remarkable historical document – Bickerton’s own account from the Manchester Guardian, July 1934, of his time in Japanese custody, which I will reproduce in full:

The inhuman treatment in the police cells, while of course not aimed specifically at me, nevertheless is calculated to break the spirit of any prisoner. I was confined in a cell measuring 12 feet by 5 1/2, in which there were never less than nine, and sometimes as many as fourteen, other prisoners. Among my cell mates were three insane persons at different times, all of them raving. During the twenty-four days of my confinement I was never allowed to have a bath. Prisoners must sit with their legs crossed all day. No exercise is allowed. I was given three meals per day, consisting in all cases of bread and jam with cold milk, for which I paid 10 sen. The brutality of the jailers is beyond imagination. I was not beaten by them, but the almost daily sight of other prisoners being stripped and beaten with sticks till their backs were a row of weals or kicked till they could not stand up– and all for very minor infringements of discipline — was hard to bear.

In prison, conditions as I experienced them were very different, and I have no complaints to make, except, of course, to say that the food is not suitable for Europeans. The jailers were all decent to me, and the one especially in charge of me, Io, could not have been more kind.

In the preliminary hearing of my case, Judge Tokuda afforded me every kindness, and I have no complaints to make — except to say that when I told him how the police had beaten me he displayed not the slightest interest.

The police examination was conducted by two plain-clothes police officers named Ogasawara and Suga. It took place at police headquarters.

During the second day’s examination (on March 14) Ogasawara remarked that I had probably heard tales of police torture from my Left-wing friends but that I would see for myself they were untrue as I would never be forced to say anything. The next morning the chief of the Foreign Section of the Police Headquarters came into the room and said, ‘I hear that you want to see the Consul or a lawyer.’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ He then stated that until I had answered all their questions I could not see either the Consul or a lawyer. If there were any points of law I wanted to be made clear, he would always be glad to explain them. In any case, he concluded, he had already spoken about my case to the Consul.

The fourth examination was on Monday, March 19. It began about 11 a.m. At about 6 p.m. Ogasawara said that if I would admit giving the money to Matsumoto, we could then go on to investigate my motive for giving it. He went on talking for about half an hour; I let him talk. Suddenly he said, ‘Now what was your motive?’ I realized the trap and said vehemently, ‘As I never gave the money, how can I have had a motive?’ He exchanged incredulous glances with Suga and said, ‘Half an hour ago you admitted giving it. We both saw you nod your head. How could we be discussing motives otherwise?’

When finally they saw that I maintained my denial, they went on to another point and worked out with me how I spent my monthly salary of 565 yen. After writing down all items, there was still a surplus of about two hundred yen, which I did not know how I spent. Ogasawara wrote down the figures 200 yen on paper, telling me to stare at them until I remembered. For some minutes I stared at the figures in silence in spite of their demands for an answer. Then Suga lost his temper and stamped on my toes. When I winced, he said, ‘Oh! So you are a human being after all; you can feel pain. Then answer.’ My continued silence caused him to start kicking me on the leg, smacking my face and punching me on the ear. finally, turning to Ogasawara, he said, ‘It’s no use being gentle with this beast (chikusho),’ and going out of the room soon returned with a baseball bat. ‘It’s six years since I used this. I’m a bit out of practice,’ he smiled. He made me sit up straight on the chair, asked the question once more, and when I did not answer gave me a crack across both legs above the knee with the bat. The question was repeated again and again, each time with a blow on the legs or thigh. Suga continued to hit me half-heartedly for some time, until finally they finished up the day’s examination at about 8:30 p.m.

The first part of the next examination was plain sailing, being a statement of family circumstances, ideas, growth of interest in the Japanese revolutionary movement, the publication of a volume of my translations of Japanese proletarian stories by Martin Lawrence, and so forth. At about 5 p.m. the assistant chief gave instructions to carry right on till he came back from dinner.

About 9 p.m., Suga discovered, among papers seized from my house, a translation, from Sekki (the Red Flag), in my handwriting, of the confession of an agent-provocateur. ‘Is this tsushin?’ asked Ogasawara. Not realizing for the moment how strong the word ‘tsushin‘ (a report, especially one sent by a correspondent) was, I answered, ‘Yes.’ He wrote that down, and then followed a storm of questions. ‘Whom did I send these reports to?’ … ‘What papers were they published in?’ … ‘Did I get paid for the work?’ … ‘How many times had I sent these reports since September… twenty, fifteen, ten nine, eight, seven, six?’ I was so tired and weak I could hardly speak. I begged them to stop the examination for that night, but they repeated their threats of keeping me all night… of giving me some ‘massage’… of calling in stronger men.

At last I answered at random, ‘Six times,’ and he gave me a pencil to write down details of each ‘report’. I said I could not remember the details, so Suga kicked me, smacked my face, punched me many times to help my memory, so he said. When the beating left me only more sullen, Ogasawara said he would promise to stop the examination for the night if I would just give the address of the person I sent the reports to in England. I gave an address, which he wrote down, and then I stood up to go home. ‘Oh, no, not yet. I only said I would not press that point any more to-night. Now we go on to another point.’ This was the only time during the whole examination that I felt absolutely desperate.

Then they began pressing me as to who had given me Sekki. About this time the assistant chief, in kimono, came back. They reported satisfactory progress. He gave them permission to finish up for the night when I had answered who had given me the paper. He said to me, ‘Come on, don’t waste time, anything will do as long as it’s an answer. Where did you get Sekki from? Man, woman, boy, girl, dog, cat; picked up in the street?’ Like a hypnotized person I answered, ‘Man.’ … ‘A Japanese man?’ … ‘Yes.’ … ‘His name?’ … ‘I can’t tell.’ … ‘All right, write that down; that will do for to-night.’

He then came over to me and half affectionately, half-threateningly, curled his arm around my neck saying, ‘You are a decent chap in many ways. I wonder when you’ll say the name. It was Matsumoto, wasn’t it?’ I did not answer, and he continued, ‘I’m afraid these methods alone won’t get it out of you. We’ll have to get someone to give you some of this,’ and playfully he pretended to throttle me, uttering a strange sound of ‘Gurr, gurr’ each time he jerked his arm. Then he took some paper from his kimono sleeve and kindly wiped my greasy face, as he said to the others, ‘We’ll have to get that other fellow (aitsu) to string him up from the roof and give him something, and then perhaps he’ll talk.’

The next day there was no examination, but on Thursday, March 22, when I was brought to headquarters, I told Ogasawara that I wanted to retract what I had said at the last examination, as my brain had been so confused that I had let myself be persuaded into saying anything. He answered that I could not do that. A proof that my brain was not confused, he said, was that on that night I still denied the important things. However, he allowed me to retract certain statements.

On Friday, March 23, after the British consul had seen me, Suga looked extremely uncomfortable. He said I was the most selfish person he had ever known, always considering myself, never considering them and talking a lot of rubbish to the Consul. But the atmosphere was noticeably changed. About 3 p.m. the assistant chief sent in three dishes of mitsumame (beans and jelly) for us, and before 5 p.m. he said we could stop the examination for that day.

About noon on March 24 the examination was resumed by Ogasawara and Suga. The former said to me, ‘To-day is Saturday, so we shall just clear up one point, and then you can have a shave and go back to your Kojimachi home’ (the police station). The point to be cleared up was who had given me Sekki. I said I could never tell because that would be betraying a friend. At 3:30 p.m. we were still at the same point, but the examination was transferred to the chief’s spacious room, as he had gone home. They said they were both tired and wanted to get home to their families, but it was obvious that the assistant chief had told them they must get an answer first. I could think of no more arguments to justify my refusal, so the atmosphere soon became tense. Suga went out of the room and came back with a bamboo fencing stick (shinai). Ogasawara locked the door and pulled down the blinds. Suga started whacking me with the stick across both legs above the knees. ‘From whom did you get them?’ The question was repeated without any variations by both of them so many times that I thought something would snap in my mind. When Suga spoke they made me turn my head to the right to face him when I answered, and when Ogasawara spoke I had to face him. Each time they asked the question Suga beat me. He raised the stick above his head and brought it down with force. He always brought the stick down in the same place, and I could not help wincing. During one lull I said to Ogasawara, ‘You said in front of the Consul yesterday that you never hit me, but what are you doing now?’ But he gave no answer. As the blows were renewed my voice gave out, and I just sat silent. Finally at 5:15 p.m. by the clock in the room, Suga sat down almost in a state of collapse. He shouted almost incoherently, ‘It’s no good, it’s no good. I can’t get anything out of this brute.’ At 5:30 p.m. supper came. They ate theirs in a separate room from me. Then apparently they rang up the assistant chief and got permission to go home, and I arrived back at the Kojimachi police station about 7 p.m. The next day both my legs were sore and bruised.

On Tuesday, March 27, I was brought face to face with a witness named Toshi Otsu. She said she knew me, but I denied knowing her. As the assistant chief led her out of the room, he gave me two ringing smacks across the face. I do not wish to exaggerate, but, really, a little later when I was left alone with Ogasawara and Suga, they were both almost in a frenzy of rage. All the old threats and abuse were hurled at me again. Suga almost danced on my toes. He got his baseball bat and just hammered me on the right leg and thigh. He got me by the hair and banged my head again and again against a cupboard. They shouted again and again, ‘You do know her; you do know her,’ as Suga beat me. The pain in the leg was intense as he kept hitting in the same place as he had hit me on the Saturday, but I remained silent. Finally he threw himself on a chair exhausted and said, ‘He’s too much for me, the beast.’

A message came that the chief wanted to see me. He put before me two alternatives: if I admitted everything, probably I could get off with deportation; if I admitted nothing, I should have to be indicted and spend at least a year in prison awaiting trial, during which time I would not be permitted to communicate with anyone. I asked for the day to consider my decision.

Next morning I determined to make a special effort to see the Consul. The right leg was swollen, but I tried not to limp, so that they would not suspect how bad it was. Ogasawara said the chief was waiting for my answer. I parried by saying that I wanted to see the Consul first as my answer might vary after I had consulted him. This was not allowed, so I answered that I admitted nothing.

Shortly afterwards the chief came into the room and said that he was not refusing to let me see the Consul but that he wanted first to know my reason for wanting to see him. I put forward various ones, all of which were deemed inadequate. I realized that they were not going to let me see him in my present state, so when he said, ‘Is there no other reason?’ I answered, ‘Yes, there is. I wanted to ask him also whether according to Japanese law the police have the right to use force in their examination.’ The assistant chief, Ogasawara, and Suga were all present. Their faces wore the same expression of indignation as when I brought up the same subject in front of the Consul. They all wanted to speak at once.

The chief said that he could answer my question without my asking the Consul. He explained that force (boryoku) should not be used but that men were not gods and police officers were men. When the prisoner was extremely obstinate and refused to admit obvious known facts, the detectives naturally became tired and might on occasion lose their tempers. If such things had happened to me, I was partly responsible.

Several times during the chief’s explanation of the law Ogasawara interrupted with the caution: ‘Remember, the chief is not admitting you were beaten; he is only giving a hypothetical case.’ ‘I quite realize that,’ I answered.

When I finally met the Consul at the court, it was exactly two weeks after the last beating, and the bruises had gone.

Again, let’s turn back to Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume 4, for the rest of the story:

Empson became involved, working to smuggle Bickerton out of the country. According to Ronald Bottrall, he took away Bickerton’s clothes and provided him with an entirely different outfit, complete with dark glasses and a false moustache. Then he booked a passage for Bickerton, obviously in an assumed name, on a foreign freighter. As the pair approached the gangway, a member of the Secret Police appeared — only to present Bickerton with all of his old clothes cleaned and pressed. That final detail might not be so farcical if the Tokyo authorities simply preferred to turn a blind eye rather than risk an international incident. In any event, Bickerton certainly jumped bail and left Japan on the Empress of India on 8 June, bound for Victoria and Vancouver. There is no suggestion that Empson alone arranged for Bickerton to get out of the country by subterfuge. In fact, we cannot even know if he was placed under suspicion for aiding and abetting the escape, or even questioned about it. But there is evidence to indicate that he certainly knew they had an eye on him by then.

(Empson himself was expelled from Japan in 1934 for his homosexuality; the rest of the entry on him is very interesting indeed, and actually, all of the book looks fascinating – mainly tales of English teachers carousing, but at a far enough remove that it seems charming…)

The detail about the member of the Secret Police giving him back his old clothes isn’t one I’ve found in contemporary accounts, which have their own charming details, such as this one from the Western Argus (Kalgoorlie, WA) from July 17, 1934:

London, July 7.–Mr. Bickerton to-day described his escape while on bail. He said that only one non-Japanese ship fortnightly went direct from Japanese waters. He considered stealing aboard the Empress of Japan the night before her departure and hiding in a lifeboat, but he actually walked openly up the first-class gangway wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a suit in which the police had not previously seen him. Mr Bickerton held a stray paper streamer, waved to imaginary farewellers among the crowd on the wharf and then pretended to doze on a deck chair until outside the territorial limit, when he informed the purser that he was a stowaway with sufficient money to pay his fare.

In 1935, another, quite rousing account from Bickerton on his time in custody appeared as part of a larger, very interesting article about the Communist movement in Japan as he experienced it:

Up to the time of my own arrest I had little or no knowledge of the morale of the Japanese communists. Imprisonment among them gave me an inside knowledge of their calibre which would otherwise have been unattainable. Therefore I count my imprisonment as one of the most important experiences of my life. In the police cells, where I was detained, about forty per cent of the prisoners were communists. These political prisoners were mixed indiscriminately with petty thieves, dope pedlers, confidence men, and rogues and vagabonds generally. I observed that always the communist prisoners had great personal prestige, and no matter how young they were the ordinary prisoners did not dare to bully them, but rather hung on their lips anxious to hear something of this new philosophy which kept its holders cheerful even in surroundings of filth and degradation. The invisible but none the less strong discipline existing among the communists I was soon to experience. On the second morning at wash-time, feeling disgusted with the lack of soap, toothbrush, etc., I gave myself only a perfunctory toilet, and went back to mope in the cell. One communist, aged twenty-one, in the same cell came over to me disapprovingly, and said: ‘You’ll never last out if you behave like that. You should wet your towel like we do, and then come back to the cell, and have a thorough rub-down all over; and while the jailer is busy supervising the others you get the chance to do a few physical exercises as well.’ I took the hint, and certainly found that this procedure enabled me to endure prison conditions much better. The communists are the only ones who thus discipline themselves.

Again when ordinary prisoners are beaten by the jailers for alleged infringements of discipline, they grovel and whine, begging for mercy. The communists on the other hand endure all such punishment with contempt. It so happened that most of the communists in our group of cells had already finished their police examination, and were therefore having a respite from torture and third degree methods. ‘The first month is the worst: if you stick that you are all right,’ they impressed on me. Thus every morning when I was called out for examination the communists in the different cells (including seven women) would creep up to the bars and whisper as I passed: ‘Doshi, gambare!’ (‘Comrade, carry on,’ is perhaps the nearest translation; but this Japanese nil desperandum has become a flaming inspiration, the watchword of the Communist Party in Japan). As I returned at night from the ordeal, I felt the eyes of all the communists were upon me; and even if I was very late those in my cell would still be awake and awaiting my report. …

At the beginning of my examination I was amazed to find that the police were trying to convert me–a foreigner. In a way I can take it as a compliment that they thought me worth saving. Had I been a business man they would have simply deported me forthwith. But my position in the oldest and best of Government high schools, and the popularity (if I may be pardoned for saying so) which I enjoyed with the five thousand students who had been under my tuition during my ten years’ service, made me specially worth converting. Already the Japanese have a team of American and English ‘propagandists’. But as in the Salvation Army, the greater sinner you have been, the better saint you become. Therefore, from the start it was made clear to me that I could have anything I wanted if I would cross over. But the snag is that they judge the sincerity of one’s conversion by one test–the betrayal of others.

Bickerton appears again in Hansard in February 1935. It is important, I feel, to note here that John Simon, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from November 1931 to June 1935, was a controversial figure who is most remembered today as one of the “Guilty Men” called out for their appeasement policies toward Germany, Italy and Japan. Indeed, Simon in particular was criticized repeatedly for his appeasement of Japan through his failure to condemn the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (for which he was, apparently, congratulated by the Japanese emissary). Simon’s pre-war behavior was seen as so toxic that Clement Attlee bluntly refused to appoint him to the British delegation at Nuremburg.

On that note, consider the following exchange:

MR. WILMOT asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can now make a statement regarding the compensation to be paid to Mr. William Maxwell Bickerton in respect to his ill-treatment by the Japanese Government; and whether any assurances have been given that British subjects will not be so treated in Japan in future?

Sir J. SIMON
I have considered the reply by the Japanese Government to the representations made by His Majesty’s Ambassador at Tokyo. The reply contains satisfactory assurances regarding the future treatment of British subjects arrested in Japan. There is, unfortunately, a conflict of fact between the Japanese Government and Mr. Bickerton as to the latter’s allegation of ill-treatment and I do not consider that in the circumstances a claim for compensation could be usefully made.

MR. WILMOT
While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his reply and for the trouble which he has taken in this matter, may I ask him whether he feels that nothing more can be done, having regard to the fact that this British subject was arrested, thrown into prison for no other crime than that of harbouring dangerous thoughts, and that there is little doubt that he suffered much indignity and some ill-treatment?

SIR J. SIMON
I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is well advised in putting these matters of detail, but, if he puts them, of course, I must answer them. In the first place, to be quite fair to everybody, it is not the case that this gentleman was merely arrested on the ground suggested. He was arrested on a charge of a breach of the Japanese law. Whether it was right or wrong, I have not the least idea, but no one can complain because he was arrested. As regards his treatment, that, of course, is a different matter. Unfortunately, as I have said, there is a difference as to the facts, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will see what a difficult thing it would be, therefore, to carry the claim for compensation further.

MR. WILMOT
Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the fact that this British subject was arrested, detained, and, after a long period, released—

MR. SPEAKER
This matter cannot be discussed at Question Time.

If one’s sincerity is to be judged by one’s betrayal of others, Imperial Japan had a very good friend indeed in John Simon. And the Communist Party of Japan suddenly found itself with a very good PR man in the west. These accounts of the torture practiced by the secret police were likely among the first in English and are, as far as I’m aware, the only ones written by a Westerner who experienced it first hand. His courage as a translator and as a human being are worthy of remembrance.

Update (3/16/2013): I’ve added a few more accounts above and I’ve applied to the National Archives to receive a digitized copy of Bickerton’s file.

Update 2 (3/16/2013): Now I’m very eager to see Bickerton’s file. I’ve managed to dig more up — he appears briefly in a biography of Margaret Mead as a “homosexual friend” in Paris in 1926.

Then he appears, suddenly, three times in Barbara Anslow’s diary. Anslow was an internee at Stanley Prison, Hong Kong, as was, it appears, Bickerton:

4 Mar 1945: Very disappointing news – early this a.m. the Japs woke us up calling for Max Bickerton, and men went off re parcels.

27 July 1945: Outside roll call, followed by a general address outside Block 2, where Married Q. people and Blocks A1, A2 and A3 assembled. … Lieut. Kadowaki, looking like a member of the foreign legion with khaki flaps attached to his little cap with 1 star on, Mr Max Bickerton (our interpreter) and Mr Gimson stood on tables – Kadowaki had a table to himself. Kadowaki gave some explosive words in Japanese which Bickerton translated in a low voice to Mr Gimson, who relayed message to us.

In 1946, he was back in China, in Shanghai. From Friend of China – The Myth of Rewi Alley by Anne-Marie Brady:

Former CIC [Chinese Industrial Cooperatives] worker Max Bickerton, who took up a job teaching English at Peking University, was asked to leave China because of his homosexual activities. Yet a few other foreign gay men were allowed to stay on, perhaps because they were more discreet than Bickerton. But all this was yet to come. In 1949, in remote Gansu, no one could be certain how the Communist policies would affect their lives. None the less, just before liberation, Alley called a meeting of men who were gay at Shandan, mostly Europeans, and told them to be a little more circumspect because, he said, the Red Army was very puritanical about sex. (p. 45)

Alley’s sexual preferences were known by many of those who worked with him in the co-operatives, though it was seldom discussed openly. Max Bickerton, a fellow New Zealander working in CIC’s Shanghai office, who was himself a homosexual of ‘the more outrageous sort,’ joked to Courtney Archer in 1946: “Think of Rewi Alley out there in the Gobi Desert with 300 boys!” (p. 49)

A little bit more about his life in Shanghai and Beijing from Foreigners and Foreign Institutions in Republican China, edited by Anne-Marie Brady and Douglas Brown:

Max Bickerton, who had worked for the CIC and in 1949 took up a job teaching English at Peking University, was asked to leave China because of his homosexual activities. Yet a few other foreign gay men were allowed to stay on, perhaps because they were more discreet than Bickerton. According to Peter Townsend, who worked with him in the 1940s, Bickerton was very blatant about his sexual preferences; he would go out in the evenings dressed up in lipstick and makeup. Bickerton boasted to his co-worker Mavis Yan about his sexual exploits: “I had a wonderful night last night with a laundry man.”

And in 1949 he turns up in Beijing in this account of the life of his friend Empson, William Empson, Volume II : Against the Christians by John Haffenden:

Max Bickerton, the New Zealand Communist whom Empson had last seen in Tokyo in 1933, turned up in Peking at this time and jumped at the offer of a teaching post at Peita. (The homosexual Bickerton grew very close to Hetta over the months in Peking, and, in a sort of way, he came to love her, though he was rather given to nagging her. Three years later, when the Communists threw him out of his job at the university and out of his room on the campus, only Hetta among the foreign community stepped in to house and feed him. Later, in England, he became her tenant in London and would remain in the house until his death.)

And a little more on this corner of England where he ended his days:

Studio House in Hampstead… was a dishevelled and disheartening place to come home to. The house was still being used as a camping ground by a variety of lodgers including A.G. (Dinah) Stock, the author and anarchist, and John Wright (who had established in Studio House, under the auspices of the Hampstead Artists’ Council, a workshop and studio for the puppet theatre that would become world-famous when it was removed in 1961 to the Little Angel Theatre in Islington), as well as others including Pat Miles, Barry Carmen, and Max Bickerton (who had started a private English language school drawing pupils from among the families of foreign embassies).

Update 3 (6/14/2013):

Bickerton’s places of employment in Tokyo prior to his arrest, according to Haffenden: “Tokyo University of Commerce, First High School, and Furitsu (Prefectural) High School.” Tokyo University of Commerce is present day Hitotsubashi University. The other two are a bit useless, though it could mean Hibiya High School?

Bertram, James M. Beneath the Shadow: A New Zealander in the Far East, 1939-46. John Day Company, New York: 1947. Appears pg 71,72. 106.

From the Japan Society of London Bulletin, #51, February 1967 (courtesy of the Japan Society): Bickerton’s obituary (.pdf)

Obituary

WILLIAM MAXWELL BICKERTON
1901 – 1966

“Max” Bickerton, who died at Hampstead on November 20th, 1966, represented by his life and work pretty well everything for which our Japan Society stands, plus a scrupulous personal integrity which was all his own.

His connection with Japan began earlier than that of most of us, at the age of 23. Born at Christchurch, New Zealand, he attended, like David Low, the famous cartoonist, the Boys’ High School in that city and, thereafter, Victoria College, Wellington, of the University of New Zealand, from which he graduated in 1923. He went straight into teaching after graduation and it was following a year’s experience in a high school in Maori territories that he came to Japan, where he was appointed to the staff of the Tokyo University of Commerce at Hitotsubashi.

He spent four years (1924-28) at Shodai, and then six at the First High School (1928-34). I was his colleague at the former during his last year there and was a fairly close friend for the rest of his life. I came, then, to know him well both academically and otherwise.

From the outset, he plunged almost completely into Japanese life. He started serious study of the Japanese language on arrival and kept it up until his departure, acquiring a knowledge which was to serve him and others in good stead when, captured in Hong Kong in 1941, he acted as interpreter at the Stanley Internment Camp. Meanwhile, it gave him an intimate understanding of Japanese life and lore. He got out of Japan, then, in knowledge as much as he put into it by straightforward, competent teaching of English. He did not, however, put out as much about it as he might have done, although his study of “Issa’s Life and Poetry” and his translations of the stories of Higuchi Ichiyo and also of some of the proletarian writers of the late twenties are of permanent value.

Essentially, he was a good learner just as he was a good teacher but not given to exploitation of what he learned. And so, until his death, he just went on learning and teaching side by side. After the war, he taught English privately in London for a time and then went to China, where he taught, mostly in Peking schools, until the advent of the communist regime. For the last ten years of his life, he was Lecturer in English at the Holborn College of Commerce of the University of London and during the whole of that time he was following university courses in Japanese and Chinese.

We see, then, a man serving in an unspectacular way the purposes to which our Society is dedicated, the study of Japanese culture including its intimate Chinese associations and the promotion of Anglo-Japanese cultural exchanges. But his service was always subject to the limitations imposed by his scrupulously critical assessment of his capacities and his horror of any form of exploitation, this last the product to some extent of Marxian idealism under the influence of which he came during his stay in Japan. Few scholars are disposed to exploit their fellow men in the accepted economic sense of the word. Max Bickerton went further than that; he was always consciously anxious not to exploit his learning. He felt–mistakenly, I believe–that he had no important contribution to make to oriental studies and that led him to avoid what he regarded as “facile exposition of the second-rate”. His was an exacting academic conscience. But it bears the hallmark of an integrity almost frightening to many of us.

VERE REDMAN

Update 4 (7/3/2013):

The files from the National Archives have arrived. And it was worth the wait, I think.

17.6.41. P.T.C. for possible employment in the Far East. Educated Victoria College, Wellington (M.A. 1922). Professor Tokyo University 1924, later at First High School. Taken into Custody 13.3.1934 at Tokyo on suspicion of Communist activities, but the F.O. have no objection to his employment on this account. Escaped from Japan on 8.6.34. by “Emperor of Japan” sailing for Vancouver. Visited England 1926 and 1933. U.S.A. 1930.

24.6.41. M.I.5. advised that they strongly recommend that 2800 should not be employed.

26.6.41. C.R. advised that 2800 was arrested in Japan on 13.3.34 during the round up of Communists which followed the death of a police spy. C.R. subsequently received information from a highly delicate source that between 2800’s release from arrest and his escape from Japan, he was definitely taken on by the Comintern at a monthly stipend for secret work. No details as to the nature of the work are available. When 2800 arrived in the U.K. on 28.4.1933 he was accompanied by a Japanese subject, and it was noticed that this man’s passport bore a Russian Visa. 2800 on this occasion was found to be carrying a number of books dealing with the Russian Five Year Plan and also works by Karl Marx.

22.7.41. O. advised that in view of C.R. and M.I.5’s remarks, 2800 would not be employed.

—

S.O.2

William Maxwell BICKERTON was, as you probably know, arrested in Japan on March 13th, 1934 during the round up of Communists which followed the death of a police spy.

We subsequently received information from a highly delicate source that between BICKERTON’s release from arrest and his escape from Japan, he was definitely taken on by the Comintern at a monthly stipend for secret work. No details as to the nature of this work are available.

BICKERTON had previously arrived in the U.K. on the 28th of April, 1933 accompanied by a Japanese subject named Minoru MURAKAMI. It was noticed that MURAKAMI’s passport bore a Russian visa. BICKERTON on this occasion was found to be carrying a number of books dealing with the Russian Five Year Plan and also works by Karl MARX. He stated that he had been a teacher in Japan for the previous 12 years. MURAKAMI, an inspection of whose baggage disclosed nothing of interest, stated he was travelling with BICKERTON as his private secretary.

V.A.
26.6.41.

—

So this is the totality of his file, really raising more questions than it answers. Was he really on the Comintern’s payroll? Who is Minoru Murakami? But I think this is about as far down the rabbit hole as I’m willing to go – for now.